SIDERIS AncientWorldEconomyCourse 2015

ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
Principles & Practice in Classical Worlds Economy

(5HD382 Chapters on economic history)
Dr. PhDr. Athanasios Sideris Ph.D.
Athens Prague
January 2015
A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy
Contents
1. An Introduction to the ancient World: Geography, Ecology & Demography
2. Household Oikos and Property
3. City, legislation, and the economic institutions
4. The invention of coinage and the monetization of ancient economy
13
5. Agriculture and land ownership
17
6. Trade and the great debate
22
7. Banking in Athens
26
8. Prices, wages, revenues and liturgies
30
9. Slavery
36
10. Tendencies in the Economic History of Classical World
40
Literature
42
1. An Introduction to the ancient World: Geography, Ecology &

Demography
Basic Chronology
EUROPE
GREECE
ROME
Late Bronze Age
Mycenaean
Late Bronze Age
Early Iron Age
Dark Age / Early Geometric
Early Iron Age
Geometric
Archaic
Classical
Late Iron Age
Republican
Hellenistic
Roman Occupation
Roman Empire
Roman Empire
Roman Empire
Late Antiquity
Eastern Roman Empire
Western Roman Empire
Geographical setting
The Mediterranean Basin forms a specific climatic and environmental unity. Geomorphology
is varying, but the prominence of the sea and the sea-fare conditions played a significant role
in the development of all Mediterranean cultures.
The Classical civilization (Greece and Rome) owes much to the heirloom of the pre-classical
/ Middle and Near Eastern civilizations.
Pre-classical civilizations
In the area of contemporary Greece flourished three pre-classical civilizations: The Minoan,
the Cycladic (which is now seen mostly as connected to the Minoan), and the Mycenaean.
Both the Minoan and the Mycenaean civilizations developed administrative organization,
strict social hierarchy, centralized economy and extensive trade comparable to those of the
Eastern empires.
Tribes and language

In Greece there were several tribes, among which most distinguishable are the Ionians, the
Dorians, the Aeolians and the so-called Northwestern Greeks. The distinction is based upon
linguistic features, documented in the varying forms of the newly acquired alphabet (taken
from the Phoenicians, but considerably changed and adapted).
The Colonial Expansion

Between 800 and 400 BC the Greeks colonized almost all the shores of the Mediterranean,
competing at this venture with the Phoenicians. The main reason for the colonial wave was
the hiatus between population growth and land sustainability. The colonized areas included
Asia Minor, East and South Mediterranean, the Black Sea, Italy and Sicily and Northwestern
Mediterranean.
Inland was colonized much less and according to the current data only in Asia Minor and
Balkans. The colonial process continued later in the Hellenistic period, following
Alexanders campaign, starting from Asia Minor and continued all the way East, until Persia
and todays Afghanistan.
The Natural Environment

The understanding of the ancient world economy implies the study of the natural
environment, which also includes phenomena such as: unpredictable catastrophes (volcanic
activity, earthquakes, dust storms, locusts, floods), erosion, deforestation, drainage of
marshlands and diffusion of malaria, animal extinction, study of ore availability, man caused
pollution, rainfall rates, cereal-growth and known cereal species, temperature variations
linked to specific cultivation conditions (olive and wine), agricultural and botanic techniques,
such as grafting and spread of fruit trees.
Health, Disease and Demography

The population in the ancient world was exposed to several dangers, among which severe
diseases related to food and water supply, epidemic diseases, warfare and piracy.
To measure the economic potential of such a population a HALE (health adjusted life
expectancy) index is needed. HALE practically means years lived in good health.
The infant mortality in the ancient world, as generally in the pre-modern societies, was very
high. The population growth had a very slow rate, evolving under mutually canceled factors
and with considerable regional fluctuation.
In Greece the main population growth occurred between 1000 and 400 BC and may be
compared to High Mediaeval population growth in Europe.
Population regulation and urbanization

There are varying trends in population regulation through Antiquity, and these have strongly
temporal and spatial connections. The general well being was always a decisive factor
directly linked to the food supply. In some places/periods (such as Archaic Greece or
Republican Rome) there is a strong population pressure, which led to fertility control and
institutional measures for its achievement.
The urbanization process started already during the Neolithic period- achieved a pick in
Classical Athens (40.000 citizens, but approx. 200.000 inhabitants), in Hellenistic Alexandria
(half a million inh.) and in imperial Rome (1 million inh.).
Reading for the seminar

Literary or primary sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source
Epigraphy http://www.greekepigraphicsociety.org.gr/newsletter_04-2012.aspx?menu=10
Archaeological sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_artifacts
Arithmetic systems http://www.fhw.gr/chronos/04/en/society/index.html
Metrical systems http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Measurements.htm
2. Household Oikos and Property

Household
The meaning of Oikos in the ancient Greek context coincided with the basic production
unit. It had a very strict organization, managed the property rights and the labor participation
of its members, regulated the production and consumption, and usually had also a distinct life
cycle.
One of the main sources for the study of the ancient household is Xenophons Oeconomicus
(treatise on estate). Within the oikos the gender division, both in property rights and in labor
participation, was clear and mostly unchanged for centuries. There were however several
local particularities (i.e. property owned by women).
Methodological issues with the sources

In the study of the ancient household there are three basic problems: a) the absence of
quantitative data, b) the difficulties to document the decision making process within a
household, and c) the moralizing overlay in household discussions without counterbalance
from the women side.
There are also several concerns about our data set since the only direct sources are the
Egyptian papyri and some inscriptions, while the literary and philosophical writings are
mostly conventional, or -in the case of forensic speeches- tendentious.
The main observed polarity is that men worked, lived and affirmed themselves outdoor,
while women only indoor. In support of this view come also the testimonies of the
iconographical conventions (men=black, women=white). The children are almost invisible as
workers or/and consumers and only rarely visible as owners.
To what extend did the ideology had practical effects, limiting womens ownership and labor
participation, is strongly debated, but in the few relevant corpora there is evidence of strong
gender asymmetries. Especially the presence or absence of women on particular legal
documents deserves more attention.
Household organization
Oikos in Greece and Domus in Rome mean coresidence, kinship, commensality and
economic cooperation. Both are partially based on the so-called Mediterranean type of
marriage, which consists of monogamy (with few exceptions), when men in early thirties
married women in late teens (evidence from funerary commemoration patterns).
All women must marry and when they dont they may bear important testamentary
disabilities. The high mortality however led to the situation that by the age of 35/40 approx.
50% of women where widows, while the children reaching adulthood with both parents
living might be no more than 20%.
In Mediterranean societies does not apply the primogeniture inheritance system, meaning that
the ancients practiced various forms of partible inheritance. There were no multi-family
houses (except in rural Egypt), but in Athens and Rome (as well in other big cities)
household might include several slaves.
Property ownership
In property ownership there were important restrictions for women, which were under the
control of their kyrios (father or husband).
In Athens sons received equal parts of the patrimony and daughters dowries for marriage. For
dowry husband offered land as guarantee and the mortgages went from 500 drachmas to over
a talent. Upon divorce dowry should be (and effectively was) returned.
Epikleros is what they called an unmarried orphan daughter without brothers. Any epikleros
must marry the closest male kinsman in order the estate to pass to the sons of this marriage
2 years after their puberty.
For practical reasons a woman could have transactions up to a medimnos of barley (a weeks
food supplies for her family). Occasionally women made small loans to relatives, but large
financial transactions belonged to men.
In Gortyna (Crete) the property was divided in maternal property and patrimony and was
transmitted from both lines. In Sparta by the 4th c. BC women owned as much as 40% of the
household property. They even entered the public sphere with participation to some games of
the Olympics.
According to Xenophon women were more influential and responsible within the oikos as
they could influence indirectly their husbands or threaten with divorce (especially if they had
a considerable dowry).
There were special senior magistrates (archons) who looked after orphans. A father before
dying (or his relatives) could choose guardians for the orphan children and it was also
possible to bring legal action against neglecting guardians.
Womens and Childrens labor

Women were working indoor, in contrast to men who worked in agriculture and pasture.
Nevertheless women did participate in harvests (crop, olives, wine), when a timeconcentrated large scale effort is needed.
Grain grinding and textile production were time consuming domestic tasks for women. Some
women did participate in the manufacturing sector, especially when it was not needed to be
in the same workshop with males.
Important differences occur between leisured aristocratic families and working families. In
poor families children did much of the work expected from slaves started according to their
physical capacity, but often before the age of 10.
Child exposure would leed to enslavement or child prostitution, but for freeborn children and
slaves in households only light tasks are attested. Early age labor was often associated with
some kind of apprenticeship of a craft.
To ancient Greece and especially to Athens we can attribute the birth of the institutionalized
schooling. The sophists were paid for teaching and training, but probably less than 10% of
the population benefited from formal education.
Investment in human capital could be acquired and used in the cities, precisely where life
expectancy was lowest, depressing the length of return of the investment.

The womens role http://www.fhw.gr/chronos/05/en/society/index.html
Household, gender and property in Classical Athens
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/639240?uid=3738128&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&ui
d=4&sid=21101377385291
Women in Athens http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/ancientchix/
Circulation of Knowledge (chapter 1, pp. 16-24)
http://www.google.gr/books?id=x_k91r2u6NgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_sum
mary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
3. City, legislation, and the economic institutions

Citys definition and space
A city has by definition its own frontiers, laws, judicial system, taxes and currency set of
institutions mostly established in the Archaic period for the Greek cities and the Republican
Rome. The city defined the position, function and social rank of all its members in a more or
less strict hierarchy, while providing the frame of their rights, obligations and activities. The
city interacted with its neighboring cities, the non-Greek people and later with larger and
more powerful entities, to which it has been incorporated without, however, totally
disappearing.
Citys economic space

The ancient Greek city has two spatial components: the Asty (= habitation center) and the
Chora (= territory supplying at least some of its needs). There is evident throughout antiquity
a certain aspiration to self-sufficiency, clearly related to the fragmentary of Greek landscape
and the communication difficulties, which in turn influences the self-sufficiency model of
private estates.
City (which often has just the size of a town) and countryside are complementary not
parasitic one to the other. The Weberian model adopted by Finley oversimplifies when treats
cities simply as consumers and the countryside as producer.
In theory city dwellers were equal to countrymen, as were small scale peasants equal to large
landowners, but this was valid only in democracies and only for citizens (not all inhabitants
were citizens).
Social hierarchy
The citizens constituted the heart and body (so-called demos) of the city. There was no notion
of an abstract state. The citizens possessed full set of rights, owing land & real estate in
particular were considering themselves as owners of the cities property and they shared
joined responsibility for the citys debts.
Citizenship was transmitted in patrilinear way, sometimes the mother too needed to have
citizen pedigree a situation which favored endogamy. In Hellenistic and Roman times
citizenship was granted more liberally.
The remaining often larger- population of non-citizens fell into two lower categories and
possessed limited rights. The lowest category were the slaves, but between them and the
citizens there was a group of free men and women, variously named in different parts of the
Greek world. To this vague group belonged women and minors under guardianship, the
citizens deprived of their rights as a punishment for some crime, and in some cases the halfborn-citizens.
Beside them there were free foreigners settled in the city, called metikoi in Athens or
paroikoi in other cities, who didnt have access to land ownership (Perioikoi in Sparta did).
Xenoi where just passing foreigners, but when they have been proclaimed proxenoi (consuls)
then they were also granted the privileges to own land.
In the lowest scale of the hierarchy where the chattel slavery (market sold), who constitute
the main labor force for every domain. They had collective dependence and formed entire
communities working for others, but they still havd right to residence and possession of
movable goods. Mostly they were war-conquered and subdued. Aristotle describes the
ideological justification of the distinction free X slave, mostly meaning Greek X Barbarian,
as an ontological fact, but the evidence shows there were Greek slaves too.
Institutions
In most democratic cities the supreme power and legislative body was the assembly of the
people (all free adult males) called ekklesia. The law-preparatory body was boule (assembly)
and the government was exercised by prytaneis and archons.
The economic transactions took place mostly in the marketplace, which often coincides with
the Agora, the meeting place of the citizens. Neither spatial nor linguistic boundaries
separated commercial from political activities. The ambivalence of the political and
commercial activity is reinforced by what the citizens acquired in the Agora: tim (meaning
both price and status or honor)
The Agora and its function is better known from Athens, but its principles were not all shared
by non democratic cities. Aristotle aspires into a free Agora, whereas free means free of
transactions and not open to craftsmen and farmers. Plato accepts even day-to-day
fluctuation of prices, but forbids praising up commodities. Comedy of the classical period
records several bargaining scenes, but does not necessarily reflects reality.
Emporoi (merchants/traders) manipulated the grain (and other goods) offer and demand in
order to obtain maximal profit and thus in some poleis fixed prices have been imposed to
prevent speculation. The Agora (as well as the harbor) was supervised by state officials, the
10
agoranomoi = market magistrates. They controlled quality of the goods and sometimes prices
too. Athens disposed also a board of metronomoi = measure magistrates controlling weights
and measures and making sure merchants used genuine standards.
The grain trade was important enough to have its own magistrates = sitophylakes, who
watched over the price chain from barley to bred, controlled the weight of loaves, recorded
the provenance of grain and cared for its timely supply.
Taxation and public expenditure

The main revenue for cities was taxation (present in an early form already in Mycenaean
palatial system). Taxation became more regular when public institutions were shaped and
minted money was spreading in the Archaic period.
Taxation was highly diversified and unequally divided among various population categories.
Direct taxation was considered degrading for free citizens. Eisphora (direct tax on wealth)
was totally exceptional, in cases of state emergencies. Wealthy citizen were encouraged to
contribute benefactions and to assume liturgies (fixed expenditures for public services).
Taxes were imposed to assets (land, houses, slaves, flocks, apiaries) or to products (grain, oil,
wine, wood etc.).
Some cities with important revenue from mines (Thasos) or from trade taxes (Athens)
abolished or reduced direct taxation. Others like Miletus and Teos had direct taxes even for
dependent communities, who paid often in kind. The most important revenue for a city was
however the indirect taxation, such as the pentekoste (2%) on all imports and exports,
calculated by the market managers and collected by private individuals acting as agents.

Private, public and sacred space
There is a regular distinction between private (idios) and common (koinos). The term
demosios designates whatever belongs to the people (demos) => demosia chremata = public
funds. A second distinction separates between secular (private or public) and sacred
belonging to the gods (hiera chremata = sacred funds). Interactions between private, public
and sacred abounded, although most economic activities where left to the private sector.
The sacred space comprised land, buildings, farms, workshops and all kinds of movable
goods. The sacred (as well as the public) land was marked by special stone boundaries.
Sanctuaries often held inventories of their movable goods in order to control management
11
and transmission between changing officials. Santuaries where usually controlled by

families, clans, cities or rarely group of cities (Delphi).
The public space comprised equipment and buildings refurbished or constructed with public
funds and serving common needs, such as ports, warehouses, shipyards, arsenals, streets,
aqueducts and fountains, cisterns, theaters, baths, gymnasia, fortifications, mines, quarries
etc.
Both sacred and public amenities where administered by private individuals, to whom were
rented or conceded. These individuals paid back money which represented the poroi or
prosodoi (revenue) of a city or a sanctuary. Both sanctuaries and cities engendered numerous
economic activities, even if they were not directly productive, since they often possessed
slaves working for them, and they were undertaking large scale construction projects.
City and sanctuary expenses

Among a citys or a sanctuarys expenses the most important were: buy public and sacred
slaves, remunerate state officials, finance the troops, the festivities, the sacrifices and the
award prizes in competitions and games, buy the construction materials for buildings and
ships and pay the workers and specialists involved in their construction.
The economic management was much more primitive than today and cities didnt see in
taxation an instrument to be used for social ends (wealth redistribution). But cities did
merismos (budget for the year to come) and were concerned to balance expenses and
incomes.
12
4. The invention of coinage and the monetization of ancient
economy
The origin of coinage
The importance and utility of coinage rest upon its uses as a commodity not affected by
seasons and time: a) as measure of value, b) as wealth storage, c) as medium for exchange.
The assessment of value does not depend upon measuring it against a single common
measure. Several measures were known already from the Homeric period: cattle, grain,
bronze cauldrons and tripods, silver vases, bronze and iron double axes, gold, silver, bronze
and iron ingots, etc.
Wealth storage could use other forms than coins - mostly metal vessels and jewelry.
There were important evident effects of money used as exchange medium. Heraclitus talks of
the exchange of goods for gold and gold for goods in order to introduce the idea of things
coming and returning to fire. There were also some drawbacks of early coinage: uncertain
metallic content (composition of electrum) and adoption of different standards
The idea of coinage and the first coins are attributed to the Lydians, who possessed electrum
from the river Pactolus. It dates probably from the end of 7th century BC. Herodotus links
this invention with the fact that Lydians have been also the first retail vendors (kapeloi).
Precious metal nuggets existed already as a mean of exchange, but they now became
standardized in weight and stamped by the authority which guaranteed their acceptance
within its domain of power, as well as their genuine quality. The minting of coins has been
adopted immediately by Greek city-states.
Names and denominations

One early money form is represented by iron spits (oboloi). A handful (drakse) of them, that
is 6 oboloi, represented one drachma. Shekel, siglos and stater (all of Babylonian origin)
mean weight. The denomination in use followed varying standards in silver:
The Persian shekel 11g (2 sigloi)
The Phoenician shekel 14 g (4 drachmas in Thrace & Macedonia)
The Aeginetan stater 12 g (2 drachmas of 6 g)
The Attic tetradrachm 17.2 g (4 drachmas of 4.3 g)
The Corinthian stater 8.6 g (3 drachmas of 2.87 g)
13
The Rhodian tetradrachm 15.3 g (4 drachmas of approx. 3.8 g)
Stamps and issuing authorities

The first coins had a stamp on one side, later on both sides. The dies (punch and anvil),
between which was placed a flan of metal were sometimes skillfully designed. Quite often
the designs were speaking symbols (semata lalounta) Rhodes with rose, Selinous with
parsley, Phokaia with seal etc. Besides the symbols inscriptions were used on coins, usually
describing the citys or citizensname. In other cases they give the name of the magistrate in
charge to mint them. Later coins bear the names of Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors.
Since the beginning the minting was a city/state monopole as was the control over precious
metal mines, which provided the material for the coins.
Types of coins and circulation

The first electrum coins appeared in the last third or by the end of 7th century BC. Electrum
issues have been minted also in Ephesus, Mitylene, Phokaia, Chios, Teos, Miletus (all East
Greek cities).
The first gold or silver issues appeared in approx. 550 BC. First to adopt coins in Greek
mainland was the city of Aegina, then those of Athens and Corinth. Between 520-480 BC
coins are adopted very widely by more than 100 cities and barbarian neighboring
communities like Thracians and Iberians.
Several cities do not possessed the precious metal and have to import it but they did not use
the coins of their neighbors (with the exception of some Cretan cities). This fact shows that
minting coins it was a clearly political, not simply economic decision. The use of firs coins
(as high value denominations) is already varying: paying the mercenaries, the workers wages,
the materials needed in public constructions, distribute surpluses to citizens, collect taxes,
fines, rents.
The development of democracies favored the use of coins and the coins favored the creation
of some democratic institutions. Recently has been shown that small value coins circulated
abundantly in Asia Minor already in the 6th century BC for everyday uses. By late 5th century
BC bronze coins have been in use for the same purpose and in a fix rate to silver coins. Cities
fixed a nominal value of approx. 5% higher than the intrinsic worth of the coins (manufacture
costs and tax) as they fixed the exchange rates since they could impose the use of their own
coin inside their territory.
14
Mines and mint workshops

Gold in Greece was mined in Siphnos, Pangaion and Dysoros in East Macedonia, Rhodope
mountains, and collected from auriferous rivers like Echedoros and Pactolus. It was also
imported from the Caucasus area (the Golden fleece myth), Afganistan, and possibly SubSaharan Africa.
Silver was mined in Lavrion (Attica), Thasos, Skapte Yle, Astyra in Troade, and Mountains
of Taurus and Antitaurus in Cilicia. It was also imported from the Iberian peninsula.
The known minting workshops are mostly close to the Agora of many cities (Athens, Pella,
Argos) or close to the harbor (Massalia). Mints are called argyrokopeia and they were
functioning with public slaves. Argyros means silver in Greek, but gold and bronze coins
were equally minted there. Smaller cities entrusted their issues in the workshops of larger
ones. The Hellenistic kings (and later the Roman emperors) had their own workshops, some
of which were mobile following them on the move.
Even while belonging to larger entities some local mints continued to display their names or
initials on the coins.
Monetization and inflation

The monetization culminated during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but the process
begun back at Darius time (521-486 BC), who asked taxes to be paid in silver. This
continued under the Seleucid dynasty in the Hellenized east. In Egypt however, where crops
have been taxed in kind monetization didnt advance in the countryside as much as in the
cities.
Two aspects need particular attention: the impact of inflation on prices and the role of
standardized coinage in facilitating exchange and market integration.
Alexander seized 180.000 talents (312 tons of gold and 2000 tons of silver) in Persepolis and
Susa. It is estimated that between 330-290 BC over a billion of coins were struck in Attic
standard, which is almost equal to the seized precious metal amount. It is not known how
much of coined metal came from mines, but the influx of these coins (adding 25 million
drachmas per year) led to an important inflation mostly in Asia Minor and the East and less
in Greece. Much of these money has been spent in the East (founding new cities), but a
considerable part came to Greece with the return of gradually demobilized soldiers. Knowing
their sold and number we estimate the amount that came in during a decade to between 70100 thousands of talents.
15
For comparison: Athens annual public income under Lycurgus after 338 BC was 1200
talents.
The inflation might have affected food and everyday commodity prices, but it would have the
opposite effect to luxury items made of precious metal, which in this period appear
particularly often in the grave inventories.

Some coins received quick and general trust, and when linked to a powerful or trade
controlling authority they became international currency. Such were the gold daric of the
Achaemenid empire, the Aeginetan tortoise for a brief period, the Athenian owl for more
than two centuries, the Cyzicene stater for the Black Sea area, the Alexanders tetradrachm
for the entire Hellenistic world, and later on the Roman denarius.
Some of the most popular and trusted currencies have been intensively copied, like the
Athenian owls (provoking thus the need for control dokime by 375 BC) or like the
Alexanders, which were imitated mostly as a political statement by the Thracian and Celt
rulers.
Early coins, Aegina, Athens http://www.fhw.gr/chronos/04/en/economy/index.html (see also

the supplementary sections on the up-right of the page)
Money in Ancient Times
http://www.oenb.at/en/ueber_die_oenb/geldmuseum/allg_geldgeschichte/antike/money_in_a
ncient_times.jsp (especially the chaptes Attic world currency and The Hellenization of
the Roman monetary system)
Money in Antiquity
http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521459525&ss=exc
16
5. Agriculture and land ownership

Rural world
Throughout antiquity agriculture was the base of city economies. More than 80% of the
population was involved at least during harvest and grape-picking times.
The citizens considered land ownership as their more or less exclusive right. For this reason
the cities provided land to those of the citizens who didnt own, through division of extant
plots or allotting plots outside city boundaries (kleroi=lots, in colonies and cleruchies).
Throughout history land ownership constituted the basis for most large fortunes. Agriculture
shaped the landscape, marked the societies and pervaded customs. Work on the land was
connected to ethical values, conservatism and routine, which resulted from permanent fears
for drought, diseases of the crops and herds, and led to sticking with well-tried approaches
than risking innovations.
An intensive dry agriculture has been practiced in Greece with low yields. In order to
maximize them more arable land and more labor force were needed. Virtually all
useful/cultivable soil was occupied in European Greece due to the constant demographic
pressure from the early 8th to the late 3rd century BC.
The crops: cereals, vine, olive

The Mediterranean triad (cereals, vines and olive trees) spread in the Neolithic, Bronze Age
and Archaic period respectively.
Wheat/pyros and barley/krithai were generally called sitos. Soft wheat existed but it was rare.
The ordinary cultivated species was triticum dicocum durum. Barley grew and ripened more
rapidly thanks to deeper roots, consequently its cultivation predominated on thin soils. Two
varieties of millet were frequently cultivated: sown in spring and ripened in summer. After
the harvest (Aprl-June) of cereals the land was left fallow for over a year. Next spring it was
prepared by early plowing (stubble and weeds were used as green fertilizer).
The vine adapted to dry and stony soils, but it required a great deal of work and attention.
Grapes were harvested in September/October, according to Hesiod, and left for ten days
drying in the sun, then five more in the shadow, to produce a dry liqueur wine. After crushing
the grapes the must was collected in large jars and left to its natural fermentation sometimes
for months. In the spring the cuttings were pruned and spaced out followed by plowing and
17
fertilizing the soil. Concentrated grape juice provided the only sweetener, except honey,
known to ancients.
Like vine olive trees could grow in thin soils but they needed some 20 years to fully grow
and produced fruit one year in two. The cultivation area of olive is limited by excessively
low or high temperatures and strong winds (not easy to grow on Aegean islands). Harvesting
of green olives began in September and of black ripe olives in November through the winter
months. Old olive trees were cut right back to the stump to encourage new shoots.
Among the other cultivations one should mentions the vegetables in gardens and the sesame
and poppies for their seed and oil.
There were also plants used as fodder: grass, lupinus and alfalfa. The known fruit and nut
trees in antiquity were much less than those growing in Greece today and included apples,
pears, cherries, plums, figs, blackberries, hazelnuts, chestnuts, almonds and pistachio
(unknown orange and citron).
To fertilize the soil the farmers used animal dung, burned weeds and turned the straw and
grass under the surface to serve as green fertilizer
Stock-raising
According to Xenophon stock-raising is linked to agriculture (probateutike techne, probata =
sheeps and goats). Pigs, chicken, geese, cows and oxen were elavated as well. Oxen, donkeys
and mules were draft animals or beasts of burden. Horses were for luxury mounting, hunting
and warfare. Most of farmers conducted some agropastoral farming with at least burden and
draft animals, some poultry and smaller animal pasturing on wasteland or on land left fallow.
Flocks posed problems concerning the land division between pasture and culture. Stockraising was however always the less important activity. Flocks moved from mountains to
lowlands each winter and back to the mountains for the summer. Transgression of boundaries
and disputes over pastures frequently gave rise to conflicts
A few landowners specialized in extensive stock-raising (the case of Eubolus of Elateia, who
owned 220 head of cattle and horses and 1000 ship and goats). Such owners possessed large
pastures or they could rent communal or sacred land (epinomia = pasturage right).
Some sanctuaries (Delphi, Delos) raised animal in their own land, certainly for sacrifices, but
also for the market (hiera probata). Besides milk, eggs and wool the live-stock provided after
processing cheese, leather, textile and clothing. Their meat was consumed in a rather
exceptional way, mostly in the context of (or under the pretext of) religious sacrifices.
18
The voracity of goats is incriminated for total deforestation of the Cycladic islands and
partial of Crete and Peloponnesus.
Beekeeping, hunting, fishing

Beekeeping was widespread since honey served as general sweetener.
Hunting provided substantial supplies. Big game (deer, wild boar) was mainly the
prerogative of rich people, since it needing good organization and many participants. Small
game (hares, rabbits, ducks, quails, pheasants, partridges and pigeons) was within the grasp
of all.
Besides occasional fishing of farmers, they were professional fishermen too, fishing tuna,
swordfish, mackerel, turbot, red mullet, sardines, anchovies, mollusks and shellfish.
A particular fishing and processing was that of murex (purpureus & brandaris) to produce the
expensive purple dye.
Foodstuffs
Cereals provided the 70-80% of daily needed calories (still 70% was in 1960s for Cypriot
peasants). Grain in the countryside was processed in the house, while bakeries and mills
existed even in small towns. The same was valid for the processing of olives and wine.
Roasted barley flour (alphita) was used to make maza the most common basic staple, usually
consumed with some opson (vegetable, meat, olives, cheese). Olives were eaten row or
mashed, but oil was the main product. It was used for cooking, sauce making, and even for
perfumes and skin care. Some items, such as eels from the Kopais lake were considered
luxury dishes. Meat of domesticated animals was consumed mostly in festivals and during
sacrifices (flesh for humans X bones for the gods).
Besides wine the Greeks drunk also kykeon, a barley gruel with water and herbs. There were
many varieties of wine, most of them thick and strong, often perfumed and spiced or mixed
with salted water. Famous wines were those of Thasos, Lesbos, Chios, Rhodes, Mende,
Maronea. The wine was served in symposia in a krater mixed with water and followed by a
variety of customs.
Types of land property

City land was progressively distributed among all or most of the citizens in Greece and the
Aegean area. There was a clear link between real estate and citizenship (some exceptions:
perioikoi). In some cities the landownership was a condition of citizenship and each citizens
19
plot was held as inalienable patrimony. In Sparta more or less the plots had the same size,
10-18 hectares, while in Athens the average is calculated to 5 hectares. There were however
larger estates 25-27 hectares in Attica (1/10 of citizens hold of the land). In Thasos large
vine estates covered several dozens of hectares.
Methods of exploitation
Most people cultivate themselves their land. Some rich people could afford estate stewards
(epistatai). A third way was applied in Sparta: indigenous dependent people (helots)
cultivated the land and gave to the citizens the largest part of the product.
Public and sacred estates were rented to individuals. In the Aegean Sea Apollo was the
largest landowner (owned the entire islands of Mykonos, Rhenia and Delos, where his most
important sanctuary was located).
By 300 BC in order to rent the sacred estates there have been special rules, called sacred
contract = hiera syngrafe, stipulating such details as for how many years of rent should be
auctioned a house or a plot belonging to Apollo.
Organization and occupation of the land

The Greek territory has been occupied early and cultivation won out over stock-raising.
According to Thucydides the best land for cereals was Thessaly, Boeotia and Peloponnesus.
In all these areas surveys have shown intensive occupation from 5th to 3rd c. BC. Thasos
with an urban center, scattered farms, road network, forests, vineyards and amphorae
workshops next to them, indicates a dense tightly knit community, intensive exploitation of
the territory and a close symbiosis between town and countryside.
Surveys on Cycladic islands (Delos, Tenos) have shown the importance of terraces in the
local agriculture system (preventing erosion, retaining the scarce rainwater). On the opposite,
marshy plains were drained (Eretria and Larissa). The early draining of Kopais (dating to the
Mycenaean time) was resumed in Alexanders time and continued without been completed
until the 2nd c. AD.
Woods and wasteland were used for grazing live-stock, beekeeping, hunting, collecting wood
and charcoal. Around 200 BC we observe a net decline of the countryside combined with a
demographic slump with signs of recovery under early Empire. The causes are complex
wars, insecurity, banditry, natural catastrophes. Oligarchies stepped to power in most cities
and a few Romanized wealthy people possessed huge estates. They privileged stock-raising
20
against cultivating, like Herodes Atticus who held enormous estates in Attica and
Peloponnesus.
In Asia Minor with more unoccupied land and more diverse resources the recovery were
quicker and total. Large estates appeared, especially in Cappadocia and in the Black Sea
coasts, but they never reached anything equivalent to the Italian latifundia.

Class division according to property (mostly agricultural income)
http://www.fhw.gr/chronos/04/en/society/221synth_income.html
Olive http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Olea.html
Fishing in the Black Sea
http://blacksea.ehw.gr/Forms/fLemmaBodyExtended.aspx?lemmaID=11931
Source material for fishing in Antiquity http://www.scribd.com/doc/49696257/SourceMaterials-for-Fishing-in-Antiquity-and-the-Early-Middle-Ages
21
6. Trade and the great debate

Trade as the key to modern approaches of ancient economy
The Pisa wreck dates from the 2nd century BC and was found in the city harbor. The
archaeologists found mostly wine amphorae and other pottery, as well as a huge number of
animal bones, including those of three horses and a young lioness. This case-study is used
often to illustrate difficulties in our understanding of ancient trade.
Trade became in late 19th and early 20th century a controversial issue between scholars,
leading to two opposite concepts represented by the Modernists vs. the Primitivists.
The literary evidence concerns a few big cities (Athens, Alexandria, Rome). We do not have
a year-per-year or detailed information as we do possess for modern times. Particular cases
like wild animal trade get noticed, but less glamorous trade activity does not.
Modernists (Michael Rostovtzeff) consider the ancient economy a modern one, only
quantitatively smaller not qualitatively different. They take trade as a granted activity, a
human instinct to exchange goods and pursuit profit.
Primitivists on the other hand (Max Weber) see ancient economy as one of a pre-industrial
agrarian society, lucking mass-demand, facing high costs of transport, and looking at traders
as poor, dependent and socially marginalized. They also point to the absence of economic
rationality and consider the cities as purely consumption centers.
The evidence however is inconclusive (single merchant in Nicomedia city council no
mercantile activities registered for senatorial families). The ceramic evidence for long
distance trade (SOS amphorae / Dressel I wine amphorae) gives a distorted image, because
pottery survives while textile, grain and other transported goods are perishable.
Redistribution and gift exchange are better recorded than trade in the sources, but the
modernists believe that this literature is the product of a landed elite, and thus it does not
reflect the social reality.
Primitivists and modernists do agree however that in antiquity the society is predominantly
agrarian. Only each of them focuses on a different component of the society (self-sufficient
oikos economy 98% or trading 2%).
Trade and modernity

The main question in this historical scientific debate is whether antiquity should be
considered modern or not modern! And it seems to be an irrelevant question.
22
This takes a particular significance if one considers that antiquity is often compared to Third
World developing economies. Interpretation of antiquity affects the assumption of a unique
feasible model: the industrialized, capitalist West, which consequently leads to the choice
between western type modernity or non-modern stagnation.
Ancient cities are compared within this debaet to the late mediaeval early modern
Hanseatic cities, which evolved under Protestant ethics and drove to the development of
capitalism. Modernists on the basis of such comparisons assume that traders promulgated and
developed their own set of bourgeois values. Primitivists downplay the significance of
trade since there is no evidence for a value system in antiquity other than that of the landed
elite. It is taken for granted that trade is driven solely by market forces and profit motives,
untouched by socio-political constraints. Several distinctions are rather mechanical and need
reappraisal: public/private, luxury/staple, self-sufficiency/economic rationality.
Scholars fell for a long time (and some still do) in the dichotomy of modernity or stagnation
model, failing to consider whether different pre-modern societies might have their own
dynamics of development and laws of motion.
Primitivists are correct in insisting that trade must be understood in the context of a preindustrial, predominantly agrarian society, with limited demand, limited technical resources,
and limited possibility of increasing surplus production. Modernists are right to focus on the
small percentage of non-subsistence activity and to consider trade as one of the key-elements
that distinguish antiquity from other pre-industrial agrarian societies.
Trade definitions
Trade is a form of exchange in which goods pass from one person to another. Other
important forms studied by anthropologists are reciprocity (gift exchange) and redistribution
(by a powerful individual or by states). If we adopt the modern view of trade as movement
of goods without knowledge of a further purchaser then there is no trade for much of the
antiquity. The environmental structures create conditions of scarcity and the uneven
distribution of resources led to the need for exchange (either local or inter-regional). For
antiquity boundaries are rather overlapping: household, tribe, state, status, ecosystem.
Substantivism and formalism

A new approach has been promoted by Karl Polanyi, who drew on anthropological methods
to argue that economies need not be organized according to the independent and self-
23
regulating institutions of a market system. He distinguished between "substantivist" and

"formalist" economic analysis.
The formalist economic analysis assumes that the principles and practices of the Neoclassical
economy are universally valid and applicable. The substantivist analysis argues that these
principles apply only to market economies, since they ignore the extend to which pre-modern
economies were embedded in society rather than being distinct spheres of activity. The
substantivists try to shed light on production, exchange and value means, other than the
market institutions.
Many of the simplifying assumptions of the economic theory, such as perfect information,
pure economic rationality, frictionless markets, are even less realistic for antiquity than for
modern world. Evidence is not detailed for goods and prices and 10% margin error is
inherent in all our estimations concerning antiquity.
The Polanyi approach has been adopted and elaborated by Moses Finley in 1973, and since
that time substantially refined and extended by several scholars.
Neoclassical economy and New Institutional Economics

Exchange is one way both of gaining access to resources that are more abundant in another
region and / or responding to the conditions of risk and uncertainty that are endemic to
agrarian economics. In Neoclassical economic theory transactions are assumed to take place
effortlessly and without any cost. The New Institutional Economics on the contrary argues
that exchange it barely conceivable without social institutions to constrain and condition
human behavior. Exchange requires agreement between parties, measure of quantitative and
qualitative attributes, terms of the establishment of the conditions for the trade, guarantee for
the measures and the money. Besides the formal there are also informal institutions: attitudes,
beliefs, value systems, morality (aristocrats, traditional Romans, Christians).
Constraints
A list with the main constraints for ancient trade should include:
Frontiers, warfare, banditry, piracy. Tendency for self-sufficiency. Slow transport augmented
the costs of commercial transactions. Land trade (beast of burden advance no more than 40
km per day), small road network. Navigation, mostly coastal, during summer and daylight
(periploi, ship capacity from 30-70, to 120-150 tones). Coins and monetization (in 200BC200AD coin circulation was equal to 17th c. Netherland or 18th c. France). Monetary
unification. Banking, loans, private and public.
24
Levels of trading
One may distinguish several levels of trading, some hierarchically organized, some just
overlapping each other. There is first the local every day farmer and craftsman trade and then
the popular festivals (panegyreis). The regional and long-distance trade included contact with
Phoenicians, Etruscans, Iberians etc. The most important commercial cities through time and
region were maritime cities, had important colonial connections, provided notorious
products, and had a language advantage.
Among the persons involved in trade the retailers (kapeloi) had the lowest social statues,
while the wholesalers (emporoi) and the ship-owners (naukleroi) could enjoy more social
esteem.
Public interventions
The city intervened in various ways to the trade transactions. These included market controls
(discipline, order, relations = symbolaia), the use of special magistrates for specific trade
sectors (agoranomoi, epimelitai of the emporion, telonai, sitophylakes), proteciton measures
against frauds (controls of weights, prices and supply), protection of foreigners (xenia,
proxeneia => asylia, asphaleia, enktesis gas, isoteleia or ateleia), institutional agreements
(imports, exports, treaties and agreements synthikai, symbolai), and direct involvement
through public and sacred purchases and constructions.

Trade routes between Europe and Asia during Antiquity
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/trade/hd_trade.htm
The drug trade in Antiquity
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1289586/?page=1
Morris, I., Economic Growth in Ancient Greece, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical
Economics (JITE) / Zeitschrift fr die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, Vol. 160, No. 4
(December 2004), pp. 709-742, Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40752487
25
7. Banking in Athens
Appearance of Banks
For primitivists the name bank is anachronistic. Evidence of transactions however does
allow us to use it. By the mid 6th century BC was created the profession of moneychanger
(argyramoiboi). The transformation of moneychangers to bankers occurred in the 5th century
BC, when they started to accept deposits and work with them. The banks were (and are)
called in Greek trapezai (tables/counters) and the bankers trapezitai. From the Classical
period onwards the profession expanded, allowing some individual to acquire large fortunes.
Deposits and deposit interests

Banks accepted deposits from private individuals for the following reasons: a) to leave their
funds somewhere safe, especially when been absent from ones own house, b) to make
payments or transfers towards a third person (the order was made to the banker not to the
beneficiary), c) to generate interests.
There were no regulatory provisions in the Athenian (or other citys) law concerning the
interests. Yet, with the exception of extreme conditions (war, famine, high risks) the interests
were stable for centuries. In the 4th century BC it was normally 12% (a single mention to 8%
seems to be related to kinship bonds between lender and borrower). In the Hellenistic period
the interest dropped to 10%, maybe as a result of the Alexanders injection of large amounts
of money into the circulation.
Credit and credit interests

Who were the clients of bankers for credit? Mostly wealthy people or at least of ample mean.
Humble folk would borrow either from relatives and friends or from moneylenders.
Why asking for credit? Needing extra liquid fund to provide a daughter with dowry; to fulfill
civic obligations, such a liturgies (or other consumer loans); and less commonly to invest in
business ventures (of those the riskiest loans were not advanced) such as: a) funding for
ongoing operation or retail fragrance business, b) loan to purchase mining concessions and to
process mills, c) to establish clothe-making operation.
The usual short-term loan credit with fixed deadline had a relatively high interest of 18% (or
more). Considerably higher was the interest for capital to be invested in maritime ventures:
starting from 22.5% and attaining 30% in some cases (in connection also to year period).
26
Public and sanctuary banks

Besides the private banks there were also some public banks (trapezai demosiai), mostly
from the Hellenistic period onwards. Their role however was not so much to grant loans to
individuals (some did), but to facilitate the city administration by: i) guarding public funds,
ii) managing budgetary tasks, iii) collecting taxes, iv) paying expenses (soldiers, public
workers, building activity), v) advancing funds to accounts that were momentarily depleted.
The most prominent public banks were in Athens, Delos, Miletus, Tenos and Kos. Certain
rich sanctuaries performed banking operations at interest rates that were usually lower than
that of private banks and private individuals (Delos, Rhamnous with 7%).
Famous bankers
The most famous among Athenian bankers (bank and banker were not dissociated) was
Passion. He was a slave owned by a couple of Athenian bankers and was given his freedom
(apeleutheros to the rank of metoikoi). At the beginning of 4th century he took over the bank
of his to erstwhile masters and he was awarded citizenship in recognition of his services to
the city. At his death he left a real-estate fortune worth 20 talents (120.000 drachmas) and
credits worth 50 talents (300.000 drachmas), plus his bank situated in Piraeus and bringing
10.000 drachmas p/y, and a workshop producing shields, that was worth 6.000 drachmas!
Another famous banker was Phormion. The social rank of bankers, although much debated,
seems to have been at least for such exceptional cases as Passion- quite high if we judge
from his connection to the general Timotheos.
Other banking activities

a) Providing sureties and insurances. b) Negotiating claims. c) Offering guarantees and
personal advice to important customers. d) Witnessing transactions. e) Exchanging and
testing coins for a fee. f) Safekeeping contracts and valuables.
The importance of banking raised in the 4th century when the Athenians tried to transform the
visible wealth to invisible wealth (that is land to money) (Aristophanes: ta emphane en
aphane). From the 4th century we know approx. 30 bankers. The earlier belief that Athenian
bankers didnt take part in maritime loans has been now (E. Cohen) considerably revised.
Bankers and banking

It was commonly believed that banking was an affair carried on by slaves and metics
(metoikoi). Slaves who managed banks often were manumitted to the state of metic in order
27
to be able to bring a suit. Cohen gives considerable evidence that some of the bankers were
Athenian citizens. In Athens there was no paper money (unbacked fiat money), but there was
something like bank checks these cashless settlements were called diagraphe (cross-out).
The scholars disagree concerning the existence of credit sale. Officially it was forbidden, but
since Plato insists much on prohibiting it in the Laws, it probably did exist.
Bottomry (or maritime) loans

Demosthenes has five speeches dedicated to disputes arising between loaners and borrowers
of bottomry loans when capital or/and interests are not returned. The loan was extended
either to the emporos (trader or shipowner) or to the naukleros (shipowner or/and captain).
From the sources we know 1 Athenian, 1 slave, 11 foreigners obtaining loans (but the figures
are probably an under-representation)
Most shipowners had only one ship Phormion had several. 10 lenders appear in the
Demosthenes speeches, of which 2 are Athenians and 1 slave (that means he lent in the name
of his master). The analogy if we count all forensic speeches is different: 12 foreigners to 7
Athenian citizens. The lender was entitled to receive capital and interest only when the ship
was safely return. In any other case (shipwreck, pirate attack) he lost both.
Bottomry loan provisions

A contract of maritime loan (bottomry bond) was written in two copies one of which
remained with a third person, usually a banker. The disputes involving overseas trade were
called dikai emporikai (commercial trials) and had two special features: a) they were
concluded within one month, b) foreigners and metics could initiate suits without citizen
guardians.
Banking principle in Athens

Money is divided to commodity money (gold and silver) and bank money (unbacked fiat
money). The loans may increase the second type of money without changing the first.
Ex.
Assets
Liabilities
Silver coins 60.000 dr.
Deposits of silver coins 60.000 dr.
Two talents loans (12.000 dr.) and the situation becomes:

Assets
Liabilities
Loans receivable 12.000 dr.

28
In this situation there is no increase in banks liabilities, but there are 12.000 dr. more in
circulation (as anticipated money-to-be). If half is consumed and half again deposited by
the new owners to the bank we have:
Assets
Liabilities
Loans receivable 12.000 dr.
Anachronistic comparison to pawnshop

Banks never accepted for deposit personal property, against which they would lent small
sums on the understanding that as their sole remedy, they would keep the property if the
funds advanced were not repaid within a specified period. To the contrary persons delivering
physical goods to a bank did so solely for safekeeping them and they had absolute and
unconditioned right to the return of these items.
The reality of borrowers, often of high political and social stature, routinely seeking and
obtaining substantial loans, sometimes even without pledging assets, refutes any suggestion
that ancient trapeza was in economic essence not a bank, but a pawnshop.

Forms of loan and forms of security. Banking.
http://books.google.gr/books?id=ZPZnUsMx0MoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_su
mmary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 98-102, 114-117.
Interest of money
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Fenus.html
29
8. Prices, wages, revenues and liturgies

Sources
Our main sources for prices, wages and revenues are the historians Herodotus, Thucydides
and Xenophon, the philosophers Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus, the orators Demosthenes,
Lysias, Aeschines, Isocrates, Isaios and Andocides, the comic poet Aristophanes, as well as
several epigraphic documents collected in Inscriptiones Graecae.
Speeches and poetry are characterized by exaggerations for defending purposes, or for comic
effect. The inscriptions are always more reliable but they also are often fragmentary. It seems
for the time being impossible to arrive to an accurate quantification of the economic
phenomena; at best we may have upper and lower limits.
Model
All models applied try to downplay the lack of evidence and get as much result as possible
from the extant documents. There are two main tendencies: a) Econometric approach with
observing of tenets of utility and profit maximization, and amble use of statistical models. b)
Estimation of a so-called structural model, derived from theoretical behavioral assumptions,
usually in their reduced form (the last would satisfy equally with Athens or modern
economy).
For the period under consideration, no significant technological progress is reported (except
in military and agriculture), possibly due to slave abundance, which has been weakening any
incentive for innovation. Between 800-300 BC doubled the consumption per capita, a fact
that may be translated as an annual growth of 0.14%. It is a considerable figure if we
compare with the 0.2% annual growth of Netherlands in the 17th-18th centuries.
Market related data

The size of family estates was usually under 30 hectares.
Views on the degree of monetization of the economy are changing along time with new finds
of hoards of small denomination, and even small silver chips before coin minting.
Harris made a list of 170 occupations/professions from the sources. Manufacturers are about
the half. Social status for manufacturers changed from 5th to 4th century BC as reflected in old
and new comedy.
30
An important regulating juridical notion was that of antidosis => challenging one for his
fortune in connection with liturgy attribution.
Prices
Wheat
415 BC
6 dr. per medimnos
E 4th c.
6 dr
335 BC
5 dr
340-330 BC
9 dr (!)
324 BC
5 dr
th
Barley
4 c.
3-5 dr. per medimnos
330 BC
5 dr
329 BC
4 dr
Bread
L 4th c.
1 obol per loaf of wheat bred
Olive tree
4th c.
12 dr per tree
Olives
L 5th c.
2 dr per medimnos
th
E 4 c.
obol per kotyle (0,07 l)
L 4th c.
1 obol / kotyle
in Delos
4th c.
2 obols / kotyle
in Delos
250 BC
2/3 to 3/4 of obol
5th c.
2 dr / chous (0,85 l)
ordinary
5th c.
4 obols /chous
??
4th c.
10 obols / chous
imported
L 4th c.
2 dr / chous
Honey
E 4th c.
3 obols / kotyle (0,07 l)
Dried figs
L 3rd c.
2 dr / medimnos (52 l)
Livestock
th
Olive oil
Wine
Chian best quality
L 5 c.
3 dr a piglet
L 5th c.
20-40 dr full grown pigs
410 BC
51 dr a cow
375 BC
77 dr an oxen
4th c.
12 dr a goat
400 BC
16 dr a lamb
th
Fish
4 c.
400-1200 dr a riding horse
425 BC
3 dr one eal from Kopais

31
4th c.
4 obols an octopus
5 obols a mullet
10 obols a sea-bass
Clothes
th
L 5 c.
20 dr woolen cloak
388 BC
20 dr cloak
329 BC
10 dr a slave coat
327 BC
18 dr a cloak for Eleusinian slave
L 4th c.
10 dr a dress for layman
388 BC
8 dr
327 BC
6 dr (a pair every other year)
Ointment
L 4th c.
500-1000 dr / kotylae
Land and house
414 BC
median price of 7 houses 414 dr, but most
Shoes
houses cost more than 1000 dr
Furniture
4th c.
average house price 2.600 dr
388 BC
the house of Demosthenes 3000 dr
360 BC
a cottage 300 dr
4th c.
4.5 hectares of land = 3000 dr
4th c.
House rent 36 dr per year
5th c.
Chair 2-6 dr
bench 1-5 dr
chest 21 dr
A large town house for 4 adults, 3 children and 15 slaves contained furniture, dishes and
utensils worth 650 dr.
Vases
L 5th c.
3 obols a Panathenaic amphora
Hetaira
4th c.
2 dr (flute/harpe player per night)
th
Voyage
4 c.
2 obols the fare Aegina/Piraeus
Funeral
4th c.
30 dr an average funeral
Wages
Before 432 BC most wages were 4 obols / day
Between 432-412 BC most were 1 dr / day
After 412 BC depending on the kind of work
32
Assembly
403 BC
1 obol per session
392 BC
3 obols per session
330 BC
1 dr per session
th
Council
4 c.
5 obols /day
Courts
450 BC
2 obols per session
420 BC
3 obols per session
4th c.
2 obols per person/day
Epistates
450 BC
4 obols 1dr every day of the year
Public prosecutor
422 BC
1 dr per day
Archon
L 4th c.
4 obols per day
Undersecretary
343 BC
3 dr per month
Scythian policeman
4th c.
3 obols per day
Theater theoric
Public officers
Workers and soldiers

Erechtheion worker
408 BC
Construction worker 328 BC
1 1 dr per day
unskilled 1 dr, skilled 2 dr per day
Soldier
422 BC
2 obols per day
Soldier
351 BC
2 obols per day (underestimate)
Adolesc. in military train.
330 BC
4 obols per day
A public aid of 2 obols per day was given to citizens possessing less than 3000 dr property
and unable to work (forming thus the first social security aid).
Public finance
Tributes
478 BC
460 talents
454-433 BC
370 talents
431 BC
600 talents
425 BC
776 talents
405 378 BC
tribute abolished
377-357 BC
200-350 talents
357-338 BC
approx. 50 talents
Total revenues & Wealth

450 BC
9.700 talents
431 BC
6.000 talents
422 BC
2.000 talents state revenue

33
407 BC
Gold Nike melted down
340 BC
400 talents state revenue
338-326 BC
1200 talent state revenue / per year
Wealth distribution
420 BC 400 people could afford a drain on their income of 1 talent a year (for trierachia)
4th c.
300 people could afford a drain of 3.000 dr a year
4th c.
Men with property over 4 talents could not avoid liturgies
4th c.
About 300 people possessed more than 3 or 4 talent property
380 BC Demosthenes father left him a property of 13 talents and 46 minas

370 BC Pasion bequeathed land of 20 talents and a shield factory of 60 slaves worth 5 talents
320 BC It was not easy to live off a property worth 4500 dr
320 BC Income of a skilled worker was 700 dr a year
322 BC Only 9.000 out of 21.000 citizens possessed more than 2000 dr property (42.5% less
than 1/3 of a talent)
Liturgies
Tragedy
3000 dr
War dances
800 dr
Chorus & tripod
5000 dr
Warships (7 years)
6 talents (36.000 dr) approx 1 tal/year
Torch races
1200 dr
Children chorus
1500 dr
Comedy
1600 dr
Religious services
3000 dr
Festivals
4th c.
100.000-120.000 dr (by 100-120 men)
300 richest citizens contributed voluntarily to festivals

336 BC
3 talents for fortification repairs

1 talent for sacrifices
330-320 BC
Demosthenes gives 1 talent to buy grain for the city

The price of papyrus in Greek Antiquity
http://www.marxists.org/history/france/annales/1929/price-papyrus.htm
34
Adornment, Gender and Honour in Antiquity http://www.plu.edu/~battenaa/doc/neither-gold1.doc (sections 3.-5., pp. 2-4)
Context for the display of statues in Classical Antiquity
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/disp/hd_disp.htm
Ober, J., Radio talk On the Ancient Greek Economy, 06/08/2012
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/08/ober_on_the_anc.html
35
9. Slavery
Number and origin
Numbers are not exactly known and hard to estimate. The guess according to Hansen is
150.000 in the 4th c. BC Athens compared to 100.000 citizens (incl. women & children) and
40.000 metics (maybe high estimations).
Analogy to free population was 1:1, while in the American South was 1:3 and in Rome 1:10.
Most of the slaves were barbarians coming from regions like Thrace, Scythia, Caria, Syria,
Libya, Phrygia, Lydia, Sicily, Black Sea and Egypt. There have been Greek slave as well,
specially after local wars. In 416 the Athenians brought as slaves all women and children
from Melos.
Athens was a center of slave commerce in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Alexandria became
another center from the 3rd c. BC onwards, and Delos was the most important during the 2nd
and 1st c. BC. (as much as 10.000 slaves sold per day!). In Imperial period Rome and in Late
Antiquity Constantinople were the new slave trade centers. In Constantinople we follow the
gradual abolishment of slavery due to the Christian doctrine.
Few of slaves were homebred. In Delphi 271 out of 841 manumitted slaves (1/4) were
homebred; in the 414 BC confiscation list only 3 out of 40 were homebred! (calculated to
approx. 12%). Existence of slave nurses shows that there have been some births of slaves.
Women slave outnumbered men.
Manumissions were less frequent in Athens than in Rome. A manumitted slave was an
apeleutheros and became metic. Only after that he could (rarely) become a full citizen.
Occupation
The manumission list of 403 BC is rewording slave supporters of the democracy after
overthrowing the oligarchic regime. Among them there are 18 farmers and gardeners, 41
craftsmen, 23 retailers, 8 working in the transport, 5 skilled servers (cooks, skriveners), and 5
miscellaneous, making a total of 100.
In another manumission list of 320 BC there are 72 domestic slaves (of which 50 wool
spinners), 36 retailer, 28 craftsmen, 13 farmers, 6 servants, 4 transport workers, and 12
miscellaneous, making a total of 171.
36
Occupation & fortune

There were slaves who had an independent work and paid a fee to their owner (apophora).
Passion was a slave granted citizenship, his slave Phormion was also granted citizenship
both were bankers. Menekles, a slave, had a property of 7.000 dr when freed. Stratokles
bequeathed a property of 5 talents. According to Xenophon a slave was not recognized
anymore from his dress at his time.
The info by manumission lists is believed to be biased downward for agriculture slaves not
earning enough to buy their freedom. While it would be also biased upwards for domestic
slaves, more likely to be manumitted.
Lysias employed 120 slaves in his shield factory. Demosthenes had 32 slaves in his sword
factory and 22 in his bed factory. Timarchos employed 12 slaves in leather works and
Kerdon 13 in his cobbler shop.
Public slaves duties were: testing money in the market, assisting magistrates and officers,
serving as under-rowers of trireme, road cleaners, mint workers, and 300 policemen
(Scythian archers maintaining order in the Assembly and the Courts these Scythians were
paid for maintaining order). There were lyre and flute factories, and several potters
workshops, known to employ slaves and exporting a large part of their products.
Laurion mine slaves

When in 413 BC Spartans occupied Decelea 20.000 mine slaves were said to flee to them.
The total of slaves in Laurion is estimated during the pick activities to 30.000 individuals. In
340 BC the state leased 140 mines annually for seven years. This gives more than 400 mines
working simultaneously. Each mine needed 50 slaves to work on the mineral extraction, plus
30 in the related refining workshop => 400X80 = 30.000.
Some wealthy mine exploiters would occupy many more slaves: Nikias had 1.000,
Hipponikos 6.000, Philemonides 300 => raising the total to 40.000 slaves.
Ownership
Athenian concept of freedom and relationship to the work.
In late 5th c. BC approx. 5.000 citizen didnt own land and certainly no slaves. But above this
pauper line almost anybody owned slaves. With citizens counting 40.000-50.000 this means
that 90% of the population owned slaves.
37
Some owned as many as 1.000, but usually a man undertaking liturgies owned 10 slaves,
Plato had 5, Aristoteles 13, Theophrastos 9. Calculations give 5-8 for wealthier citizens and
2-4 for the average citizens.
The work of poor free people was substituted by slave work, which was less expensive.
Pericles in such circumstances initiated the huge building program and instituted payment in
the Assembly and the Council.
Slave prices
415 BC
average price of 25 confiscated slaves was 174 dr (little difference between

man and woman, but bigger between young and old)
E 4th c.
House slave 200 dr
E 4th c.
domestic slaves 50-1000 dr, an overseer of silver mines 6.000 dr
380 BC
32 slaves from 300-600 dr average 360
4th c
a slave in the mines 125 dr
4th c
a farm slave 150 dr
330 BC
a man slave with his two boys worth 4.000 dr
Prices increased over time and show improving of life conditions of slaves. Delphi need of
wheat (mainly consumed by slaves) from 3.500 kg in ca 200 BC it raised to 7.000 kg in ca 15
BC.
Productivity
The Demosthenes factories
Sword factory: 32 slaves, value 19.000 dr, net income 3.000 dr, Rate of return 16% per year
Bed factory: 22 slaves, value 8.000 dr, net income 1200 dr, Rate of return 15% per year
Agriculture: Value 6.000 dr, net income 800 dr per year, Rate of return 13% per year
From other circumstances is calculated that the Rate of return in a leather workshop was 2025% and in the silver mines 33% despite their higher mortality in these sectors!
Treatment of slaves
Plato makes some remarks concerning slaves not necessarily reflecting reality but
idealizing: He regards household slave as a property (ktema). The treatment of a slave has to
be according to his character. He wonders whither the slaves have soul or not [!]. He advises
not to hire slaves from the same region to prevent revolts. He things slaves should be treated
without hybris, but a master has the right to capture slaves who fled. The slaves have in
38
return right to asylum in the Altar of the 12 gods. The freed slaves should visit their master 3
times a month and offer their service, and they should not own more property than their exowner.
Other occupations
Quarries of marble on mounts Penteli and Hymettos (also in Pireus and Eleusis). Extraction,
transport and manipulation of blocks for the big building program of Themistocles and
Pericles => City walls, Acropolis, Agora and country Temples.
Forestry => Thrace and Asia Minor, Spain (there were 40.000 slaves in Carthagena silver
mines according to Polybius). Mines in Thrace => owned by Athenians and later by Philip II
employed many slaves. Sometimes was more profitable to let slaves buy themselves back
than pay agency coasts for monitoring them. It remains however unclear under which
condition slave labor may be competitive over free labor.

Slavery in ancient Greece http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Ancient_Greece
History of Laurion mines
http://www.lavrionminerals.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Ite
mid=29
Ancient mining for silver and gold
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115ch6.html
39
10. Tendencies in the Economic History of Classical World

Douglas North: Structure and Change in Economic History (1981)
To explain structure and performance through time you need to understand a) Performance:
how much is produced, distribution of costs and benefits, production stability. b) Structure:
political & economic institutions, technology, demography & ideology. c) Evolution through
time: temporal changes in structure and performance. d) Transparency: explicit theorizing
and potential of refutability.
1890s
Germany primitivists approach privileged the theory cellular selfsufficient households.
Eduard Mayer
Modernist, he saw as comparable the economic structures in GreeceRome and in the modern world.
Max Weber
He was not satisfied with the primitivist vs. modernist conflict, insisted
in the need to understand the economys structure.
Mikhail Rostovtzeff Modernist, he based his approach mainly on the Hellenistic markets.
Karl Polanyi
Substantivist, he favoured reciprocity, redistribution, and saw ancient

economy as embedded to other socio-political institutions.
A.H.A. Jones
Primitivist, he though there was a lack of attention to performance.
Moses Finley
Mainly primitivist, but strongly influenced by Polanyis substantivism,

he looked to mid 20th c. modernist consensus as a school-boy version
of Adam Smith. He insisted on status importance as economic
factor.
Walter Scheidel & Ian Morris
They introduced the demographic concerns and the
statistics as well as the wellbeing approach and the ecosystem issues.

During the 20th c. there has been a division in the conception of the Greco-Roman and NearEastern economies studied as Antiquity by Classicists and as Biblical World by Orientalists.
Market characteristics vs. reciprocity & redistribution model supposed to be valid throughout
Near East (Agora X Palatial systems). Newer concepts include Achaemenid Persia, Saitic
Egypt, Aegean Bronze Age and West European pre-Classical structures. Gender issues
related to efficiency are also a new research field.
40
Conclusions
Contemporary approach to the Economic History of the Ancient Greco-Roman World
emphasizes on substantivism by providing statistics on economic performance. It overcomes
the old primitivist-modernist debate by developing general economic models of ancient
economic behavior and putting them in a global, comparative context.
Classical antiquity is seen as the strongest economic efflorescence in pre-modern history, but
the narrative on it must keep this in perspective, without confusing it with the modern
economy.

Ancient Greek Economy http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/engen.greece (chapter: The debate
about ancient Greek Economy)
Modenrist - Primitivist and Formalist Substantivist controversy
http://books.google.gr/books?id=DcTj4AUFemAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=f
alse (chapter 5, pp. 57-61)
Smith, N., The Ancient Greek Economy and the Modern Economic Foundations
http://www.articlemyriad.com/ancient-greek-economy-modern-economic-foundations/
published Jan 15, 2012
41
Literature
General
Bresson A., L'conomie de la Grce des cits (fin VIe-Ier sicle a. C.). I. Les structures et la
production. Collection U. Paris, A. Colin, 2007 ISBN 9782200265045
Bresson A., L'conomie de la Grce des cits (fin VIe-Ier sicle a. C.). II. Les espaces de
l'change. Collection U. Paris, A. Colin, 2008 ISBN 9782200353582
An English updated translation of the combined above two volumes will be soon available:
Bresson A., The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy: Institutions, Markets, and Growth
in the City-States, Princeton University Press. Translated by Steven Rendall ISBN
9781400852451, expected: October 2015
Eich A., Die politische konomie des antiken Griechenland (6.-3. Jahrundert v. Chr.),
Cologne, 2006 ISBN 9783412257057
Migeotte L., The Economy of the Greek Cities, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 2009
ISBN-13: 9780520253667 [Original in French: L'conomie des cits grecques, Paris, 2002]
Scheidel W., Morris I. M. and Saller R. P. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of the
Greco-Roman World, Cambridge, 2007 ISBN 978-0-521-78053-7
Basic
Ameniya T., Economy and Economics of Ancient Greece, London and New York, 2007
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-70154-9
Archibald Z. H., Davies J. K., Gabrielsen V. and Oliver G. J. (eds.), Hellenistic
Economies, London and New-York, 2001 ISBN 978-0415234665
Austin M. and Vidal-Naquet P., Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece: An
Introduction, London 1977 ISBN 978-0520042674 [Original in French: conomies et
socits en Grce ancienne,Paris, 1972 (8th edition 2007)]
Austin M. M., Society and Economy , in Lewis D. M., Boardman J., Hornblower S. et
Ostwald M. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. VI. The Fourth Century B. C., 2nd
edition,Cambridge, 1994, p. 527-564 ISBN 978-0521233484
42
Cohen E. E., Athenian Economy and Society. A Banking Perspective, Princeton, 1992
ISBN 0-691-01592-9
Davies J. K., Cultural, Social and Economic Features of the Hellenistic World , in
Walbank F. W., Astin A. E., Frederiksen M. W. and Ogilvie R. M. (eds.), The Cambridge
Ancient History. Vol. VII, 1 The Hellenistic World2,Cambridge, 1984, p. 257-320 ISBN
978-0521234450
Davies J. K., Society and Economy , in Lewis D. M., Boardman J. and Ostwald M. (eds.),
The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. V. The Fifth Century B. C.,Cambridge, 1992, p. 287305 ISBN 978-0521233477
Finley M. I., Ancient Economy, Updated with a new forward by Ian Morris, Berkeley,Los
Angeles andLondon 1999 ISBN 978-0520219465 [first edition:London 1973]
Harris W. V. (ed.), The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans, Oxford University
Press 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0199233359
Lyttkens C. H., Economic Analysis of Institutional Change in Ancient Greece: Politics,
taxation and rational behaviour, New York, Routlege, 2013 ISBN 978-0-415-63016-0
Scheidel W. and Von Reden S. (eds.), The Ancient Economy, Edinburgh, 2002 ISBN 07486-1322-6
Recommended
Acton, P., Poiesis: Manufacturing in Classical Athens, Oxford University Press 2014
ISBN 978-0199335930
Archibald Z. H., Ancient Economies of the Northern Aegean: Fifth to First Centuries BC,
Oxford University Press 2014 ISBN-13: 978-0199682119
Archibald Z. H., Davies J. K. and Gabrielsen V., Making, Moving and Managing. The
New World of Ancient Economies, 323-31 BC, Oxford, 2005 ISBN 978-1-84217-157-8
Bekker-Nielsen T. (ed.), Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region,
Aarhus, 2005 ISBN 87-7934-096-2
43
Block F. and M. R. Somers, The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's

Critique, Harvard University Press 2014
Bradley K. and P. Cartledge (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 1,
The Ancient Mediterranean World, Cambridge University Press 2011 ISBN-13: 9780521840668
Bresson A., La cit marchande, Bordeaux, 2000 ISBN 978-2910023164
Burke B., From Minos to Midas: ancient cloth production in the Aegean and in Anatolia,
Oxbow Books, Oxford 2010 ISBN 978-1-84217-406-7
Cartldedge P., Cohen E. E. and Foxhall L. (eds.), Money, labour and land. Approaches to
the economies of ancient Greece, London and New York, 2002 ISBN 0-415-19649-3
Crespo R. F., A Reassessment of Aristotles Economic Thought, New York: Routledge, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-415-82057-8
Flament C., Une conomie montarise: Athnes l'poque classique (440-338):
Contribution l'tude du phnomne montaire en Grce ancienne (Collection d'Etudes
Classiques 22) Peeters 2008 ISBN-13: 978-9042919587
Foxhall L., Olive Cultivation in Ancient Greece: Seeking the Ancient Economy, Oxford,
2007 ISBN 978-0-19-815288-0
Gallant T. W., Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece: Reconstructing the Rural Domestic
Economy, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1991, ISBN 0-8047-1857-1
Hodkinson St., Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta, Swansea, 2009 ISBN 978-1-905125-30-2
Howgego,C., Ancient History from Coins, London and New York, 1995 ISBN 9780415089937
Lo Cascio E. and Rathbone D. W. (eds.), Production and Public Powers in Classical
Antiquity, Cambridge, 2000 ISBN 9780906014257
44
Mackil E., Creating a Common Polity: Religion, Economy, and Politics in the Making of the
Greek Koinon, University of California Press 2013 ISBN-13: 978-0520272507
Manning J. G. and Morris I. (eds.), The Ancient Economy. Evidence and Models, Stanford,
2005 ISBN 978-0804757553
Meadow A. and Shipton K. (eds.), Money and Its Uses in the Ancient Greek World, Oxford,
2001 ISBN 978-0199271429
Millet P., Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens, Cambridge, 1991 ISBN 0-52189391-7
Morley N., Trade in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, 2007 ISBN 978-0-521-63416-8
Pack S. J., Aristotle, Adam Smith and Karl Marx: On Some Fundamental Issues in 21st
Century Political Economy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2010, ISBN 978-1-84844-763-9
Paterson J., Economies of the Greek and Roman World (Ancient Cultures) Wiley-Blackwell
2014 ISBN-13: 978-1405103145
Rutishauser B., Athens and the Cyclades: Economic Strategies 540-314 BC, Oxford
University Press 2012 ISBN-13: 978-0199646357
Schaps D. M., Economic rights of women in ancient Greece, Edinburgh University Press
1981 ISBN-13: 978-1597406895
Tandy D. W., Warriors into Traders. The Power of the Market in Early Greece, Berkeley,
Los Angeles, London, 1997 ISBN 978-0-520-22691-3
Thommen L., An Environmental History of Ancient Greece and Rome, Cambridge, 2012
ISBN 9780521174657
Todd Lowry S. (ed.), Pre-Classical Economic Thought: From the Greeks to the Scottish
Enlightenment (Recent Economic Thought), reprint in 2013 of the original 1987 first edition,
Kluwer Academic Publishers ISBN-13: 978-9401079600
45

SIDERIS AncientWorldEconomyCourse 2015

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

SIDERIS AncientWorldEconomyCourse 2015

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC HISTORY

Principles & Practice in Classical Worlds Economy

Dr. PhDr. Athanasios Sideris Ph.D.

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

2. Household Oikos and Property

3. City, legislation, and the economic institutions

4. The invention of coinage and the monetization of ancient economy

5. Agriculture and land ownership

6. Trade and the great debate

8. Prices, wages, revenues and liturgies

10. Tendencies in the Economic History of Classical World

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

1. An Introduction to the ancient World: Geography, Ecology &

Late Bronze Age

Late Bronze Age

Early Iron Age

Dark Age / Early Geometric

Early Iron Age

Eastern Roman Empire

Western Roman Empire

Tribes and language

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

The Colonial Expansion

The Natural Environment

Health, Disease and Demography

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

Population regulation and urbanization

Reading for the seminar

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

2. Household Oikos and Property

Methodological issues with the sources

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

Womens and Childrens labor

Reading for the seminar

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

3. City, legislation, and the economic institutions

Citys economic space

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

Taxation and public expenditure

Reading for the seminar

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

and transmission between changing officials. Santuaries where usually controlled by

City and sanctuary expenses

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

4. The invention of coinage and the monetization of ancient

Names and denominations

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

The Rhodian tetradrachm 15.3 g (4 drachmas of approx. 3.8 g)

Stamps and issuing authorities

Types of coins and circulation

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

Mines and mint workshops

Monetization and inflation

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

Reading for the seminar

Early coins, Aegina, Athens http://www.fhw.gr/chronos/04/en/economy/index.html (see also

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy

5. Agriculture and land ownership

The crops: cereals, vine, olive

A. Sideris, Principles and practice in Classical worlds economy